“What will she care for her professional reputation when she is my father’s wife?”

The thought of Hilda with the world, in a sense, at her feet was maddening.  The Doctor paced the floor roaring like an angry lion.  “It may not do any good, but I’ve got to tell her what I think of her.”

Derry had a whimsical sense of the meeting of the white cat and this leonine gentleman—­would she purr or scratch?

“The sooner you and Jean are married the better.  If Hilda thinks she is going to keep you and Jean apart she is mistaken.”

“Oh—­did she know of the engagement?”

“Yes,” the Doctor confessed.  “I told her the other day when she came to fix the books.”

“Then that accounts for it.”

“For what?”

“Dad’s attitude.  I thought it was queer he should fly up all in a moment.  She wanted to make trouble, Doctor, and she has made it.”

Long after Derry had gone to bed, the Doctor sat there pondering on Hilda’s treachery.  He was in some ways a simple man—­swayed by the impulse of the moment.  The thought of deliberate plotting was abhorrent.  In his light way he had taken her lightly.  He had laughed at her.  He had teased Jean, he had teased Emily, calling their intuition jealousy.  Yet they had known better than he.  And why should not women know women better than men know them?  Just as men know men in a way that women could never know.  Sex erected barriers—­there was always the instinct to charm, to don one’s gayest plumage; even Hilda’s frankness had been used as a lure; she knew he liked it.  Would she have been so frank if she had not felt its stimulus to a man of his type?  And, after all, had she really been frank?

Such a woman was like a poisonous weed; and he had thought she might bloom in the same garden with Jean—­until Emily had told him.

He turned to the thought of Emily with relief.  Thank God he could leave Jean in her care.  If Derry went, there would still be Emily with her sweet sanity, and her wise counsels.

He felt very old as he went upstairs.  He stood for a long time in front of his wife’s picture.  How sweet she had been in her forget-me-not gown—­how little and tender!  Their love had burned in a white flame—­there would never be anything like that for him again.

He waked in the morning, however, ready for all that was before him.  He was a man who dwelt little on the past.  There was always the day’s work, and the work of the day after.

His appetite for the work of the coming day was, it must be confessed, whetted somewhat by the thought of what he would say to Hilda.

They had an early breakfast, with Jean between her father and Derry and eating nothing for very happiness.

There was the start in the opal light of the early morning, with a faint rose sky making a background for the cross on the College, and the chimes saying “Seven o’clock.”